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Little Help Here (Fire & Ice)
jonesing4
Posts: 800 Arc User
So, IMP (mrhinkypunk) made this post on another thread:
I wrote about a 15-minute reply that was lost to the interwebs forever since the thread got closed while I was replying. Always copy-paste before moving from the screen, Idiot Me.
At any rate, the gist of my reply was, "Teach me how." I'm not being sarcastic, I have absolutely no doubts that IMP is telling the truth about completing the alert without healers or tanks, I don't want the Rampage to be nerfed, and I think it's actually quite a bit of fun.
I just have no idea how it's possible to complete without healers/tanks. I've run it with 6 different toons, and each time I have at least one run-in with a 12-16K spike of damage, seemingly without warning. The times I've run it in a team with a tank who can't keep aggro (on Frosty, especially), it turns into an absolute bloodbath, a circus of every member of the team taking turns dying, rezzing, rezzing others, then dying again.
For what it's worth, my toons are fairly sturdy, non-gimped builds. I use exclusively Heroic gear with purple secondaries and R5 mods.
So, again, just the simple question: How? What am I missing?
Thanks to any and all who have had success in the Rampage so far and want to add their wisdom in response; any tips, tricks, tactics, etc., are welcome here.
Edited to add: Again, reiterating just to make absolute certain, since we are communicating via text after all--this is in no way a complaint or rage thread. Aside from the low (or personally non-existent, so far) drop rate of the tokens required for Justice Gear, I have no complaints about Fire and Ice. I just want to know how to do it better, particularly in the absence of certain roles in the team.
Anyway. First of all I want to say I didn't even notice the team wipe mechanic. Also I have found 4 different ways to complete fire and ice that do not require a healer or a tank in the team.
I have done fire and ice probably almost around 30 times now, no joke and I have been very unlucky with drops. I did get a lot of ice sheath's and duplicate action figures however.
I'll leave you with this. I've had the most fun on this rampage than I have in CO PvE since doing nemcon when that was first released.
I wrote about a 15-minute reply that was lost to the interwebs forever since the thread got closed while I was replying. Always copy-paste before moving from the screen, Idiot Me.
At any rate, the gist of my reply was, "Teach me how." I'm not being sarcastic, I have absolutely no doubts that IMP is telling the truth about completing the alert without healers or tanks, I don't want the Rampage to be nerfed, and I think it's actually quite a bit of fun.
I just have no idea how it's possible to complete without healers/tanks. I've run it with 6 different toons, and each time I have at least one run-in with a 12-16K spike of damage, seemingly without warning. The times I've run it in a team with a tank who can't keep aggro (on Frosty, especially), it turns into an absolute bloodbath, a circus of every member of the team taking turns dying, rezzing, rezzing others, then dying again.
For what it's worth, my toons are fairly sturdy, non-gimped builds. I use exclusively Heroic gear with purple secondaries and R5 mods.
So, again, just the simple question: How? What am I missing?
Thanks to any and all who have had success in the Rampage so far and want to add their wisdom in response; any tips, tricks, tactics, etc., are welcome here.
Edited to add: Again, reiterating just to make absolute certain, since we are communicating via text after all--this is in no way a complaint or rage thread. Aside from the low (or personally non-existent, so far) drop rate of the tokens required for Justice Gear, I have no complaints about Fire and Ice. I just want to know how to do it better, particularly in the absence of certain roles in the team.
Post edited by jonesing4 on
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We don't have to care so much about Living Fire& Ice doing this way.
You may notice towards the end I die a few times in a row. The reason for this was because we failed to get the bosses down equally which I strongly suggest you make sure you do. Without a strong healer your team may wipe if you leave a boss on as much as half a bar even.
We started on this with the original mind set, we actually found ourselves with 3 tanks and 2 healer / supporters.
The alternate ways to complete it are like so.
The highest hitting by far of the two bosses with the power to one shot some DPS is frost. It turns out that you can put a single self healing tank on him who can just keep him focused and pretty much make him less of a threat. You can also do this by keeping agro on him while staying out of his range flying. You can also reduce their perception to the point they can't even find you. These methods may also work in theory on AT's which actually hit more damage than any FF possibly can. I actually want to see 10 soldier AT's all using the old legacy sniper rifle hitting 10k dps or whatever while being unable to be hit because they are 110 feet in the air. Certainly not an intended way to be able to do it but it's viable. The perception debuffing is also a way you can go for this however.
You could also try using 2 healers, one healing and buffing and the other just spamming bubbles like a mad man especially on whoever is getting agro currently from the bosses.
An interesting mechanic in this rampage is actually that they hit each other with AOE it seems. If they blast you with AOE it also hits the other boss which can hit some pretty hard damage and make your life much easier taking them down.
Other than that a good way to find the living fire and ice is by using a bind for example "/bind v target (NAME)" you can use this to target any cages that spawn too which will allow you to quickly target it and get someone out. Also by killing a living fire you will get a buff meaning you hit more damage on frost, killing a living ice will give a buff giving more damage against blaze. This can also be used to speed up the time the rampage will take.
I think there may be some things I missed, no idea.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
That being said, the biggest and best way to deal with the damage is also the oldest: Block. 90% of Frosticus' damage is telegraphed by his actions and he has ZERO instant casts. Even on his non tell attacks, he always has the charging animation so simply blocking (it's about a 2 or 3 second cast) will mitigate a huge amount. Instead of watching for a tell, watch for his hands/movement as he's blatantly charging a blast.
Past that, AoRP is incredibly potent in this rampage more then anything else, turning non tanks into "Tanky enough to soak it" as are Fiery and Ice Forms. Someone with Icy Form and Armadillo should be able to massively mitigate Frosticus' damage (if they can hold hate) and vice versa.
The biggest problem that people are running into, it seems, are that most of the mainstays of defense (Masterful Dodge, namely) lose their oomph when dealing with the slow and steady attacks from F&I. Resurgence, Presence Boosted Conviction, and Field Surge are all going to be much more valuable in this alert because the damage is more bursty.
Last but not least, make love to Fear, Disorient, Stagger, and Sigils of Ebon Weakness. Especially for Frosticus, outgoing damage is so high that a 9-10% damage debuff is MASSIVE. Props go out to Circles as well, since damage is incredibly controllable so CoPD and CoEW are greatly useful here (for respective roles) because there's little movement.
How does the healer break you out of the ice cages?
Healer with Lead Tempest and Regen-Tank with Lead Tempest make sense. o3o
Healer =/= no attacks.
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Then let me rephrase that.
How does the healer have enough dps to keep the tank alive and take out the cages?
If they are two manning this, post a video of you both doing it without exploiting smoke grenade and stealthing bosses that shouldn't be effected by those things.
The healer doesn't have to be the one breaking cages, but that's not a bad idea for the healer to pay attention to that...
I would say though, that the most effective way is to have some AoE attacks used by your DPS mates.
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I don't think he said they were 2 manning it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I can tell you that it's totally possible to three man it though it would take -forever- because one DPS is all you need to take down a cage. The trick is that if the DPS gets caged, they die and then just get rezzed.
In all seriousness though, one good tank and one good healer are really all you need to do a vast majority of the heavy lifting. It will be hard, but you can do a lot of carrying with that.
So a good advice is to defeat Frosticus first.
Better advice is to try to evenly hurt them so that you only have a small fraction of HP to kill the second after the first dies.
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Yeah, from a healer's standpoint, after about 30-45 sec of one being left standing, the damage just becomes un-manageable to keep peeps up and alive through.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Hit [H] key in chat if you got held, as quick as possible, to let your teammate notice Living F/I spawned.
Yeah, I'll agree that Frosty is the heavier hitter of the two.
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Only successful runs, across 5 different toons with varying roles. Even got 3 tokens, Ice Sheathe, an AF, and Fireman's Jacket.
I'm having almost as much fun putting teams together as I am playing the alert. It really seems that with good bubblers, elite AoRP-ers, the odd rez, and tanks who can just hold aggro, this thing is a cakewalk. In a good way, not in a "too easy" way.
It has helped me out to pay more attention to the actual physical 'tells' on K&F before their attacks--though they can be tough to see with a lot of effects going on around them. That helps knowing when to block and be extra-careful.
In all: Thumbs up for rampage revamp so far.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Join the rampagers channel and you may find a team to join like mine.
There's always people looking to do F&I.
@dr490nbr347hi / Playing since January 25, '11
Display normal Internet behavior. Come and make fun (yes, make fun) of my PRIMUS page.
Yes, our "clique" is the Rampagers channel. Join it, it's open... you too can be part of the clique
My super cool CC build and how to use it.